The Real Story On Drilling

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not against drilling for oil. I support opening up Alaska to drilling and I also support drilling off the coastlines around Florida, or Virginia or wherever. It only makes sense to bring to market as much oil as possible, especially domestic services. Since the oil business is hardly a capitalistic market (even Republicans can't possibly be naive enough to think that the oil market is capitalistic) regulating future drilling with tight environmental safeguards and taxes would be required. This government regulation would ensure eco-friendly drilling and fair market prices for consumers. No more speculators buying paper and then selling it for 10 times the profit and no more Big Oil tax breaks when they already profit $10 BILLION a quarter.

With all that said, despite what George Bush and John McSame are saying, opening up Florida for offshore drilling, or Alaska, would not have an immediate effect on our gas prices. The Energy Information Administration, the governments official energy statistics office-- yes the same government George Bush is currently head of and the same government McCain wants to head-- states that OCS (outer continental shelf) drilling would not aleviate market prices until 2030.

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017.

Here's a chart from their site:
Even though I support more drilling, I also support more investment into alternative fuel sources. Sources that are cleaner and cheaper than oil. However, the least we could do, the most human thing we could do, during this debate about who will be our next president is get the facts straight. Stating that offshore drilling will have an immediate impact is dishonest and it's a shady, tired old way of doing politics in this country.